


A little out of fashion

by Lilliburlero



Category: Henry V - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, The Great Idfic Virus of Winter 2016/17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:13:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9234542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: Privately, Tom Gower doesn't think a flat white is actually a thing.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naraht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/gifts).



'Excuse me.'

The customer, a short, dark man in his early forties, is wearing the expression of polite but impervious dissatisfaction that generally goes one of two ways, the more usual of which is _ballistic_. Tom, for whom it has been a long morning, hopes he can nudge things in the direction of _amicably resolvable_ , but he's not too confident. He shouldn't have let Mike and Alex persuade him out dancing last night. It's all right for them, but he's in his mid-thirties (thirty-seven is still mid, right?) and those ten or twelve years on the clock make a hell of a difference. Or, he thinks uncomfortably, he should have persuaded himself to pick someone up. Might have done him the world of good. He catches sight of his reflection in the chrome of the espresso machine: even distorted, his face is somewhere clear of slapped-arse territory, and at six foot two and fourteen stone of tolerably well-maintained ex-Army muscle (no need to mention the shattered knees and sleep-patterns unless it looks like going to a third date) he's at least some people's fantasy. He should just loosen up and go for it: he never used to have these inhibitions. 

'How can I help you?' he asks, wiping his hands. 

The man indicates the cup in his hand with a nod. 'I ordered a flat white, look you. This is not by any means a flat white.' 

Privately, Tom doesn't think that a flat white is actually a thing. Just because the bloody Aussies never gave up on the sort of milk-sodden muck that in the caff above the Letchworth branch of John Menzies where he and his mates used to go circa 1995 to play hooky and chain-smoke Lambert & Butlers was called a 'white coffee', doesn't mean a miniature latte in a cappuccino cup is really a separate drink. But there are a lot of Aussies in the business, so it is. 

'I'm sorry,' he says with a smile, accepting the saucer between finger and thumb. 'I'll make you a fresh one.' He looks down at the contents of the cup, a scorched mess that isn't a flat white or anything else either. Putting the filter into the head of the machine, he reflects that he's going to have to have a word with Eamonn, who's thankfully on his break at the moment. Almost a month, and he hasn't really got the hang of anything. Tom wonders if it's his own fault: he knows that when he's explaining procedure of any sort he sometimes leaves out the obvious things that aren't, apparently, obvious to other people. A couple of those other people are dead, and one, if Facebook is anything to go by, is getting on all right with a new prosthetic leg. The customer has been talking for some time. Tom cups his ear over the pleasing hiss of the steam wand, taps and swirls the milk jug. 

'But it is very vulnerable, the crema that is, and if you let it sit too long, or drown it, see, in milk; in the cappuccino it's the froth that does for it, in the latte the hot liquid, but in the flat white there is a seamless merging, to a sort of umber ripple. The colouration of the milk is a vital point of craft in the making of coffee, that is the point, look you.' 

Tom gives a big, tolerant, discouraging grin: after four years running this place he's used to every sort of coffee bore, but the ones who try to explain to you how to do your own job are the most pathetic and depressing. At least the bean-maniacs and the roast-pedants aspire to some sort of connoisseurship. 

'That Irish boy is no good. He can't make coffee to save his soul, and quite frequently I think he is stoned. The girl that was here yesterday, the Glaswegian—' 

'Jamie?' 

'Yes, she is sensible, competent, she pours and spoons, when it is a latte, and spoons and pours, for a cappuccino. But as for her flat whites, they might be either, depending—whereas you—' 

Tom taps the jug one last time, tilts and pours. It just takes a bit of practice, that's all, like anything, get the feel for it, fold the froth back into the liquid, let go a little and withhold, a little more, draw back, a final, controlled release— 

'—are absolutely perfect in the technique.' 

Putting the cup down on the saucer, Tom looks at the man properly for the first time and sees an unexpectedly captivating face: not handsome as such, better than that, quick, mobile and full of bright mischief. It's not the face of a bore. It might be a better-looking face, in the profile-picture sense, if it were: immobilise with self-regard those hooded eyes and sharp cheekbones, craggy brow and sloping, shadowed jaw, and you could say it was striking, or some bullshit like that. But restless curiosity and intelligence keep pulling it out of shape, though what's pulling it out of shape right now is an openly flirtatious smirk, an unspoken but unmistakable _wouldn't mind finding out if you're perfect in one or two other techniques, either_. Absurdly, Tom feels a heat in his cheeks that's not attributable to the lump of steaming chrome on the counter to his left. He gets his fair share of come-ons at work. The regular yummy-mummy-and-nanny crowd got the memo yonks ago, but that leaves a lot of passing trade. With rare exceptions—he thinks of the nineteen-year-old stepson of one of the yummier mummies, white jockey shorts bunched on his thighs in the cramped stockroom, _not_ Tom's finest professional hour, and it was more like ten minutes anyway, but my God, _that boy_ —he gives them all the same good-natured brush-off, that he knows he's not going to give this time, though he doesn't know why. 

'Where are you from?' he asks. 'The accent's familiar.' 

'South West Wales. Swansea's probably the closest—Oxwich, though, to be precise.' 

'Serious? My folks went to the same caravan site in Port Eynon every summer when I was a kid. It started as sort of—well, my dad's dad joke. Gower Peninsula, and our surname's Gower, so—' 

The man sips his coffee. 'Oof. Very nice, by the way. Thank you.' 

'I know, right, but it's a gorgeous part of the world. Fantastic holidays, those were. I loved it. Funny to think we might have met back then.' 

'Doubt it. Got out as early as I could.' Tom's moderately flattered by that, but a self-deprecating grimace tells him he's probably meant to be. '35th Royal Engineers.' 

' _Really_? Bloody hell—but, look, hang on, that girl's waiting.' She dithers over the muffins, and then another customer comes in, so by the time Tom gets back to him, grabbing a pen and a loyalty card from the till on his way, the man's putting on his coat. Tom scrawls his phone number on the card. 

'Sorry we didn't get to chat. Have one on the house the next time you're passing.' 

He glances at the card and raises a shaggy eyebrow. 'Will do, yes.' The warm, musical accent makes it sound like a pledge. 

Tom's ridiculously jumpy for the rest of the day. He rebukes himself for it—it was a mad punt, out of character, the guy's not even his type, though he doesn't exactly have a type, except these days they're usually younger than him. Anyway, if he does drop in again they'll probably just have a natter, a few reminiscences, only Tom doesn't really go in for all that good old bloody old squaddie stuff either, even after five years, it's still a bit too raw—but when the only text from an unfamiliar number that he gets all afternoon turns out to be a former supplier wishing all their customers a happy and prosperous 2017 he's bitterly, painfully dashed. 

He's locking up when his phone rings. He fishes it unhandily out of his pocket, gulping to see a number, not a name, on the screen. 

'Hello?' 

The caller's first words are lost in the final descent of the shutter, but then the voice clicks instantly into recognisability, and, dammit, desirability: how could he ever have thought it belonged to someone boring? '—didn't like to trouble you while you were working, see, but I wondered if you might be free for a drink sometime?' 

Tom forces nonchalance. 'Sure. When were you thinking?' 

'Tonight? We might all be dead tomorrow, look you, quick as the weaver's shuttle fleet our years.' 

Well, why not? Playing hard to get has never been his style, which makes it all the stranger that he hasn't had sex since _last year's_ New Year. 

'Yeah,' hearing the flat note of barely suppressible enthusiasm in his voice. 'Where'd you like to meet?' 

He names a pub—Tom knows the street, but the place isn't really on his radar, a real-ale sort of joint, the middle-aged paunchy sort of real ale, not the hipster sort. He wonders briefly what he's got himself into, then thinks to hell with it. He can always extricate himself after one, or they might move on— 

'Great. I'm going to grab something to eat. Shall we say nine o'clock?' 

'Very well, yes. See you then.' 

Tom's hung up before he realises that the half-sentence that he didn't catch must have contained the man's name; something about his courteous, old-school approach makes that seem much more embarrassing than it would normally, or needs to be. Oh well, Tom thinks, setting off down the road with a step that someone who had seen him come into work that morning would consider amazingly jaunty, there were only a few names—ever seen a Welsh phone-book, look you?—that it could reasonably _be_.


End file.
